15 Ways BuzzFeed Is Toying With Your Faith In Humanity

During Internet Week New York, OpenCo invited the public to tour some of NYC's hottest tech start-ups. Chenda Ngak reports.

by Rob Walker | @YahooTech

If you’re even casually familiar with BuzzFeed, you know its signature headline style, which is awesome, mind-blowing, brain-melting, and will change your life. While this appears to be nothing more than innocent hyperbole to attract your clicks and shares, do not be fooled.

In reality, @peretti, @BuzzFeedBen, and the rest of their colleagues are playing a much deeper game. After exhaustive (=15 minutes) research (=Google), Yahoo News can now reveal that BuzzFeed’s hidden agenda for the past year or more, made plain by careful scrutiny of its headline tactics, is to toy with your faith in humanity.

1. July 22, 2011. An early nod toward the subject is tentative and conditional: If This Video Doesn’t Restore Your Faith In Humanity, Then I Don’t Want To Know You

2. June 20, 2012. But about a year ago, the tone becomes more definitive: 21 Pictures That Will Restore Your Faith In Humanity

3. July 3, 2012. BuzzFeed begins to clearly signal that your faith in humanity is in doubt: 1 Video That Will Restore Your Faith In Humanity

4. July 24, 2012. The site also signals its own influence over that faith … : Faith In Humanity Restored

5. August 9, 2012. … rather insistently: This Will Restore Your Faith In Humanity

6. December 4, 2012. The sheer repetition begins to instill the subtle existential dread that your faith in humanity is constantly in doubt: Faith In Humanity Is Restored

7. December 14, 2012. This strategy remained in place … : 26 Moments That Restored Our Faith In Humanity This Year

8. February 13, 2013. … for several more months … : The One Video That Will Restore Your Faith In Humanity

9. April 4, 2013. … testing the boundaries of how easily a BuzzFeed list can manipulate your ever-fragile condition: Five Full Concerts That Will Restore Your Faith In Humanity

10. April 9, 2013. But then, more recently, an ominous turn: 17 Cooking Gadgets That Will Destroy Your Faith In Humanity

11. April 16, 2013. BuzzFeed lists are deployed to shatter the very faith in humanity that earlier lists instilled!: 20 Pairs Of Uggs That Will Destroy Your Faith In Humanity

12. May 21, 2013. These days the site blatantly whipsaws its readers: 7 Stories From The Last Week That Will Restore Your Faith In Humanity

13. June 11, 2013. Bolstering and then crushing their faith in humanity … Watch This “What Would You Do” Clip And Have Your Faith Restored In (Some) Humanity

14. June 11, 2013. … sometimes in the course of a single day!: 10 #ThingsIHateMost Tweets That Will Make You Lose Faith In Humanity

15. June 13, 2013. This is where we stand now: Waiting in uneasy despair, desperate for the next BuzzFeed post that will pull us back from the brink where the last one left us: 25 Movies That Will Destroy Your Faith In Humanity